Saturday, 17 December 2016

The Hamas movement’s military wing Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades Saturday evening released a statement confirming that the Tunisian aviation engineer Muhammad al-Zawahri who was allegedly assassinated on Thursday in Tunisia was one its leaders and manufactured drones for the movement.

The statement described al-Zawahri, 45, as a “martyr of Palestine, Tunisia, and the Arab and Islamic nations,” adding that the slain official, who is believed to have been assassinated by the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, was a leader of Hamas’ military wing.

Hamas directly accused Israel of the assassination, saying that “the coward Zionist hands assassinated the al-Qassam Brigades leader,” and called al-Zawahri the “pioneer of the Arab Spring and the sponsor of the Palestinian revolution and resistance.”

The statement highlighted that the Ababil drones, the Iranian-developed drone reportedly manufactured by al-Zawahri, played a major role in the resistance during the 2014 Israeli military offensive on the besieged Gaza Strip. more